Secrets of a Serial Killer by Rosie Walker

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins UK, One More Chapter for this ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was a riveting read, with a multi-narrative style, similar to Into the Water by Paula Hawkins. This style can be tricky to navigate, as often in having a variety of perspectives, there’s some compromising on how deep of a sense you can get for any one character in the story. This centered primarily around Helen, an architect working on a redevelopment of an abandoned, derelict psychiatric asylum in Lancaster. Her teenage daughter Zoe goes missing, and there’s a race against the clock to save her before it’s too late.

The atmosphere with the asylum is eerie, but could have been fleshed out further to great effect. There are simultaneous stories here: one is about a historical serial killer who imitates someone to pin their killings on that person, another is about the dark history of a serial killer who lived in the asylum after its closure, yet another is about the dark web and urban explorers investigating local murders. There are even a couple more stories: one is a journalist who is trying to uncover what happened with a string of teenage girls who disappeared, and another is the experience of a young boy whose father has disappeared from his life, and his family is keeping the truth from him about why.

It would have been great to see one or two of these plot lines fleshed out thoroughly rather than so many of them very lightly done. The book was still engrossing, but would have benefited from narrowing down its scope.

You can order it here.

Comments

The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth

Photo by Tiko Giorgadze on Unsplash Thank you to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for the opportunity to read and review an advanced reader's copy of this book. The Younger Wife was a satisfying, fast-paced romp of a read. Sally Hepworth has become a reliable favourite for books that I can't put down! She has a way of writing dark subjects lightly, and her characters are always richly developed, full of flaws and quirks— which I love. I find with her writing, I never quite know how things will turn out in the end, and The Younger Wife was no exception. The book is told from the perspectives of Tully and Rachel, two adult sisters, as well as from the perspective of their father's new fiancé, Heather. Tully and Rachel's mother has dementia and is in a nursing home, so understandably, their father, Stephen, wants to move forward with life and has found love with Heather, who is notably younger than him, which doesn't sit well with the sisters. I found the characte

Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling by Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen

I haven't been so utterly besotted with a character as I was with Aisling in a very, very long time. I also think this audiobook may have broken some records on the number of times it made me snort laugh out loud with the endless Irish-isms, and the genuine hilarious earnestness of our dear Aisling. It's no secret that I love/am fairly obsessed with any and everything Irish. I'm Canadian as can be, but my paternal grandmother has roots in Ireland (and shared many of the cultural perspectives that came up in this book for the country folk, it turns out), and my mother's grandmother had family from Northern Ireland, I think. Anyway, like I said, I'm Canadian af, and so are my parents and their parents, so I'm certainly not claiming citizenship here or something. But I do think some very old family traits and traditions have made it down the line to the things we still find ourselves doing today. Additionally, many of my fond memories are due to a tiny, spritel

Tana French and Revisiting Broken Harbor

I first heard about Tana French back in 2014, and started with In the Woods, the first in her Dublin Murder Squad series. I was quickly hooked, as is to be expected when you're dealing with a writer as talented with atmospheric world building and complex, nuanced characters. As I'm wont to do, I rushed into her other books, Faithful Place, Broken Harbor, and eventually The Likeness. The Secret Place I didn't have until January 2015, and then after that it was The Trespasser, and finally The Witch Elm as they came out. In my early rush to consume everything she'd written, I found myself a little disappointed with Broken Harbor— the 4th in the Dublin Murder Squad series. Admittedly, having read it so long ago, and so quickly, there's a lot of the story that I no longer even remember. Our main crime happens in a small real estate development a ways outside of Dublin, which has been hit hard by the recession of 2008. It's half built and abandoned, except for those

Meg Reads

Search This Blog